“Engineering for INR 75,000, Law Certificate for INR 2,00,000”, reads a rate card of an agent involved in procuring degree completion certificates. According to an investigative report by The Economic Times, all it takes to obtain a degree certificate from government-approved universities is a few extra bucks.
The Problem: Fraudulent Credentials
The problem of fake certificates and credentials is not limited to the education sector alone. In the past 10 years, there has been a significant increase in the forgery of government-issued documents that have severely caused financial and reputational losses as reported by Business Insider.
But how does one go about solving such a rampant problem? The answer, like always, lies in technology. Digitization helps eliminate fraudulent paper documents and adds protective layers of security to the certificate to ensure authenticity. A blockchain solution, for instance, helps establish an immutable, distributed ledger that chronologically records transactions in real-time.
The Potential Blockchain-based Solution
By leveraging Blockchain, not only can one secure records and make them tamper-proof, but it can also help combat fraudulent claims by proving the legitimacy of credentials – making the process simpler and more secure.
Assent Chain Techlligence, co-founders, set out to create a blockchain-based solution addressing the problem of fake or fraudulent documents. To this end, the company was looking to partner with firms capable of building the technology, providing direction on product strategy, and helping bring the idea to life. This is when Kreatorverse stepped in.
Kreatorverse – The Web3 Partner
We were roped in to:
Kreatorverse, leveraging its expertise, conducted elaborate market research and user research to ensure the demand/need existed for a digital certification solution in the education industry and defined its value proposition.
While Assent wanted to build a platform that could digitally issue and verify certificates, building it on blockchain required a specialized approach. The product also had to be developed in a manner that is horizontally accessible to any industry/vertical to leverage for certificates.
The launch of the minimum viable product would take place in 6-8 months, with new features and enhancement supports as it goes live.
Provide a holistic go-to-market strategy which includes establishing growth metrics within the Blockchain application.
The Outcome – TruScholar
A Blockchain-powered Credential Management Platform, TruScholar is designed to empower institutions across the globe with secure infrastructure to establish tamper-proof digital credentials, certificates, and badges.
- The TruScholar platform is built on an open course Hyperledger Indy Blockchain Platform
- A public-permissioned network that is also compliant with the W3C DID’s protocol
- DID (Decentralised Identifiers) protocol that conforms to the interoperability standards developed by the W3C Verifiable Claims Working Group
Apart from building the technology, Kreatorverse helped TruScholar plan its market strategies, set up growth funnels, and ensure that all information with regard to traction, revenue, and user growth was well-defined and captured. Kreatorverse also provides strategic advice, guidance, and mentorship to the co-founders based on the performance metrics. Yuvaraj T, Kreatorverse founder and a Blockchain expert, continues to mentor the TruScholar founding team as an advisor and consistently monitors growth and product roadmap.
Kreatorverse also helps the company with fundraising advice and investment banking services to raise equity capital from professional investors and institutions. This included helping TruScholar with an investment mandate to ensure that the technology stood out as the centrepiece of innovation and made a case for the expected valuation.
The growth story of TruScholar
Today, Truscholar is a seed-funded startup with over 50 top educational institutions and corporates in the country using them consistently for issuance and verification of certificates and badges. They have issued over 20,000 digital certificates and successfully verified and authenticated over 11,000 certificates/credentials.
As India’s online education market grows exponentially (Indian higher education market size reached INR 4.9 Trillion in 2022. IMARC Group expects the market to reach INR 8.6 Trillion by 2028, exhibiting a growth rate (CAGR) of 9.9% during 2023-2028), the need for secure digital credentials is only set to rise further.
About Assent Chain Techlligence
Asset Chain Techlligence Pvt Ltd works towards providing digital identity solutions that cater to individuals and businesses by providing KYC credentials for Banking, Insurance, Mutual Funds, Educational Institutes, etc.
